World War Two

Find old World War 2 articles here. We have great newspaper articles from wwii check them out today!

Despair and Hunger (PM Tabloid, 1940)

PM correspondent Richard O. Boyer (1903 – 1973) was in Berlin in June of 1940 when Paris fell to the German Army. He was dumbstruck by the surprising gloominess that hung heavily upon the German people the week of that great victory:

I could not understand it all and could scarcely believe the testimony of my own eyes. The scarlet banners with their black swastikas that garlanded the city everywhere in response to Hitler’s orders seemed only to emphasize the worried melancholy. The victory bells that rang each day at noon acquired the sound of a funeral dirge when one looked at the tired, pinched faces of the Germans hurrying along the pavements … When I expressed surprise to a glum man sitting near me he glanced impatiently up and only said, ‘We celebrated once in 1914’.


The Japanese home front suffered from tuberculosis – click here to read about it…

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‘No More Pearl Harbors” (Pathfinder Magazine, 1946)

When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington – and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.

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The Pearl Harbor Story (Yank Magazine, 1942)

When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).


Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…

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Japan Could Not Afford to Go to War (St. Louis Star-Times, 1941)

The day following Japan’s debut performance at Pearl Harbor found American economists assessing the economic strength of that country in an effort to understand how long their military would be able to exert power:

Government economists doubted today that Japan’s economy could withstand a long war with the United States.


Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…

Japan Could Not Afford to Go to War (St. Louis Star-Times, 1941) Read More »

How Americans Were Seen by The Japanese (American Magazine, 1942)

In this article, photographer Frederick L. Hamilton recalled his two years in Japan prior to the Pearl Harbor attack; he let’s lose with all he learned concerning how the Japanese perceived the Americans:

They think we are soft, wasteful, irreverent and stupid…Most serious of all to the Japanese is their belief that we have no spiritual quality, no sense of honor.

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Novelty ”Victory Fashion” Makes An Appearance (Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

It’s hard to believe – but Victory Fashion hit the American home front before it was even called the home front. However by mid-1941 Americans were pretty outraged by fascist aggression: the U-boats, London bombed, Nanking ravaged, France invaded – the list goes on. When this article went to press, we were not in the war but we were firmly on the Allied side. The word victory made its way into fashion circles and the nation’s couturiers began turning out novelty accessories and garments. Even the hairdressers contributed.

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Pierre Laval: French Premier and Traitor (Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

French collaborator Pierre Laval (1883 – 1945) is remembered as the Nazi tool who presided over France between 1942 and 1944, allowing for the deportation of Jews and French laborers into Germany. On D-Day, Laval stood before the radio microphones cautioning his countrymen not to join in the fight against the German occupiers. His many sins would be known a year later during the liberation of Paris, but this writer was very accurate in cataloging all his many failings, both as a citizen of France and as a Human Being.


Laval was captured in Spain; you can read about that here…


CLICK HERE to read about Laval’s Norwegian counterpart: Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling…

Pierre Laval: French Premier and Traitor (Collier’s Magazine, 1943) Read More »

The Capture of Laval (Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

The game was up. At the Prat de Llobregat airfield outside Barcelona the traitor sat heavily on a camp stool, waiting for the reprieve. It did not come. The Franco government had found Pierre Laval too hot to handle… Laval shrugged: ‘I suppose if Petain can face the music, I can’. But later he shouted: ‘It is unfair… delivering me to my country.’


More about Laval can be read here

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The First Wave (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Down ramp!‘ shouted the coxswain from the elevated stern.

Down it came with a clank and splash. Ahead – and it seemed at that moment miles off – stretched the sea wall. At Lieutenant Crisson’s insistence we had all daubed our faces with commando black. I charged out with the rest, trying to look fierce and desperate, only to step into a shell hole and submerge myself in the channel. Luckily my gear was too wet and stinking to put on so I was light enough to come up.


This Newsweek journalist was the only allied war correspondent to have witnessed the derring-do of those in the first wave.

The First Wave (Newsweek Magazine, 1944) Read More »